5 Reasons Ahmadinejad Might Just Be Good for the World

Ah, U.N. Week — that time of year when Fox News sounds the alarm bells and The National Review starts making musical-theater references to impending speeches from Dictators with an Important Audience. And when the rest of us realize that Thursday's session with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be quite the opposite: another round of comic relief sure to sabotage his own attempts to be taken seriously, followed by another round of (mostly) effective sanctions. The Obama administration already rolled one eye on Monday by refusing a detainee swap, so let's see just how far one man's stubbornness can be leveraged, shall we?

1. He might still help us with Afghanistan.

Calm down: He'll have some adult supervision from Russia and India, which have both courted Tehran of late for a trilateral approach to stabilizing Afghanistan from their respective corners. And if the U.S. can finally chill out with the WMD mania after Israel's upcoming strikes (more on that below), there could be a wide-enough window for Hillary's ambassador in Kabul to work out a quiet deal.

"If the U.S. administration truly wishes to alter its policies in Afghanistan, and in Iraq," Ahmadinejad told Christiane Amanpour on Sunday, "we are always open to cooperation, as we are now." If by always he means temporarily and under the strictest circumstances, then he's actually telling the truth. After all, just like with the Iraq drawdown, Iran wants Afghanistan to become stable enough for American combat troops to leave. Seriously.

2. He doesn't get the sanctions.

"The Iranian regime is quite worried about the impact on their banking system, on their economic growth," Clinton said on the same program this weekend. And she's right. Sorta. Four rounds later, U.N. sanctions seem to finally be working: Iranian oil production leveled off after Ahmadinejad took over and have been in slow decline ever since. And this latest round will make it that much harder for Tehran to attract much needed investment and technology, but really it's the kind of slap on the wrist that will only serve to send Iran deeper into the arms of its new customers in rising Asia.

Seven years ago, Europe's top economies (Germany, France, Italy, and Britain) accounted, along with Japan, for almost one-third of Iran's oil exports. Today they're down to one-fifth. Meanwhile, India, China, and South Korea have picked up all that slack — and then some, doubling their collective share from 15 to 30 percent. It's the best of all hypocritical worlds: we feel virtuous and powerful, while the Chinese and Indians quietly quench their thirst. See? Nobody has to suffer!

3. His baiting of Israel will only stall the nuke buildup.

Ahmadinejad could possess a nuclear weapon while President Obama is still in his first term, according to our latest military estimates. And since Israel knows that Obama won't do anything drastic to stop that, our stressed-out ally will likely bomb Tehran's nuclear facilities sometime early next year — if The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg heard correctly. Odds are, the Israelis will do just enough damage to delay Iran's achievement until that man can be voted out of office — Obama, that is.

Will the strikes lead to a larger regional war? Hardly. Virtually every Sunni dictatorship in the Gulf will be cheering on those Sons of David, while U.S. Central Command quietly turns off all its radars. Sure, Iran will lob some missiles in return, and Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah will claim a "glorious victory" — as they always do in the Middle East when civilians die in numbers. But this pause in the action — or, rather, nuclear reaction — will change nothing in the end: Iran will simply redouble its efforts, with whoever's in the White House come 2013 dutifully prepared to tee up yet another round of "crippling sanctions."

4. He's handing over the real local authority to thugs.

Ahmadinejad's dream since Day One of his first term has been the same: create a dictatorship based on a single party rather than the clergy — one that ultimately makes the president more powerful than the Supreme Leader. How? Marginalize the mullahs. And judging by the success of the Revolutionary Guard's military putsch just over a year ago, Ahmadinejad has achieved most of his aim. The Guard now has extended mafia-like control over most of the economy so that all the president's men have to worry about is the occasional, slap-on-the-wrist warnings from Ayatollah Khomeini about not being too argumentative in public. A sure sign of their confidence? Ahmadinejad's closest advisor recently floated the notion that Iran's brand of Shiitism is so unique that the faithful no longer need a clergy. Nail that one to your mosque door!

5. His accidental comedy always backfires.

Whether it's using up his international airtime to decry America's stealth network of lost hiker "spies" or to defend his nation's "more advanced" judicial system (and its decision — later averted — to stone the mother of two children), Ahmadinejad is always good for a cringe. So don't sweat his latest "infamy" at the U.N. General Assembly's speaking lectern, for this too shall pass... into another skit on SNL.

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